Bunce And Cashin Win Pump ’n’ Run

Mike Bahel, who put the event on, was relieved to have been the runner-up, figuring that it wouldn’t have looked good for him to have won.
Jack Graves

Mike Bunce, who plays on Boston’s Super League rugby side, won the Pump and Run contest Mike Bahel put on at the Atlantic Avenue Beach in Amagansett on Aug. 17, pressing 125 pounds (60 percent of his body weight) 55 times, an effort that resulted in almost three minutes being deducted from his subsequent two-mile run time.
Bunce’s net time of 8 minutes and 45 seconds bested Bahel’s net time by 3 seconds, an outcome that Bahel greeted with some relief inasmuch as “it wouldn’t look too good to win my own contest.”
Though the final results provided by the Old Montauk Athletic Club were jumbled, it appeared that Neil Falkenhan, a former Quinnipiac University lacrosse player, placed third, in a net 9:02, with Caroline Cashin, the women’s winner, who had 92 reps, fourth, in 9:28.
Brook Perkin was fifth, in 9:57; Jason Hancock was sixth, in 10:06; John Ripley, who had 67 reps, was seventh, in 10:27; Connor Miller was eighth, in 10:28; Mike Bottini was ninth, in 10:43, and Thomas Brierley was 10th, in 10:46.
“The men pressed 60 percent of their body weight, the women 35 percent,” Bahel said afterward. “For every rep you got three seconds taken off your run time. The run was close to two miles.”
Bahel’s 11:09 appeared to be the quickest run, with Hancock and Bottini each recording an 11:15.
The event, which benefited the Montauk Playhouse project, is held in memory of Erin Giaime, who died at the age of 24 in 2003, struck by a car on Three Mile Harbor Road as she apparently was retrieving her glasses.
Nearing graduation at Long Island University at the time, the young woman had helped Bahel set up his Body Tech Fitness Center in Amagansett.
“Southampton Hospital owned this place before I did, and Erin was at the front desk,” Bahel said. “She helped me make the transition — she was a big part of it.”
A photo of Giaime hangs over Body Tech’s counter.